“Because it’s not about money; it’s about power. Control. Don’t you know anything?”
“I know that I’m grateful to have a place to live,” Glory had replied, a bit defensively. Back then she’d been in the newly minted shine of being Leo’s favorite, the chosen one who worked in the house and acted as his wife. At the time, she’d hoped to one day become his wife. A foolish hope. Young and foolish.
“I’ve lived in strangers’ houses enough to know that there’s always a price tag. They want your body, your scratch, or your soul. Some of them want a double dip. Everybody wants something from you.”
Had Natalie Petrov gotten what she wanted out of Glory?
The questions echoed in her mind as she locked up her cleaning cart and moved swiftly down the hotel steps, following the festive diamond-patterned carpet to the front office to make her plea. It had been a good morning for Natalie, who had joked at the breakfast table about buying a cow to keep a steady supply of milk for the sisters. Later in the van she had said something about the power of the rain to wash the world clean. “See how the drops glitter on the windows?”
Glory had hurried through cleaning her rooms, wanting to take advantage of Natalie’s rare good mood. In the reception area, Rachel was talking with a guest, a wispy gray-haired woman who was trying to hold back a tall, slender greyhound on a fat pink leash. Glory skirted around the desk and paused in the open doorway.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked.
Natalie’s upper lip lifted in a sneer that made her pretty face seem broken. “Is there a problem?”
“All good,” Glory said, remembering the first rule of the sisters: Leave the bad; focus on the good. She stepped inside the office and leaned against the framing of the door. “I’ve been thinking about how to smooth things out in the house since I caused a few ripples with Luna.”
“You did. You flat out broke the rules.” Natalie removed her glasses and wiped the lenses on the tail of her shirt. “We’ve had to make adjustments.”
For your brother’s child. Luna thought that her father was a poet named Winston, but Natalie knew the truth. And yet Natalie had always acted as if Glory had gotten pregnant from some negligent act like sitting on a dirty toilet seat. Glory had hated her for that. For treating her baby like a leper. Well, no more.
“I appreciate everything the sisters have done for us,” Glory said, pressing on before she lost her nerve. “You know I love you and the sisters. You know I have always worked hard to support the sisters and the house. I’m the fastest cleaner you got here, and guests seem to notice.”
Natalie squinted at her. “You sound kind of proud of yourself. You want credit for an ordinary job.”
“No credit. I’m just saying, I do my best. But I know I’ve burdened the sisters. And I’m wondering if it might be time that Luna and I left the house.”
“Why would you do that?”
“It’s time I took responsibility for Luna. It’s against the rules to have a child in the house,” she said, parroting the scolding she’d heard for years, “and now I understand why. Children have different needs than adults, and now that Luna’s getting older the confinement is difficult on her. I’m sure Leo mentioned he’s had to lock her in the attic, more than once, because she went next door to visit with her friend.”
Scowling, Natalie folded her arms over her chest. “You know I can’t abide a child who doesn’t obey the rules.”
“All the more reason that Luna needs to leave the house. I don’t want to burden the sisters anymore. But I know I have a lot to learn about making ends meet. I’m wondering what the two of us get in food stamps and what my weekly earnings at the hotel amount to?”
“That is all confidential information.” Natalie closed a binder that had been open to a chart of numbers and turned toward Glory. “And it’s a moot point, because you’re too late. Ten years ago I would have gladly cut you loose with her. It’s been difficult having her in the house, sucking away our resources. Children are parasites, all of them. But now, after I’ve invested in this girl for a decade, now that she’s close enough to the age where we can put her to work, you want to take her away. You’d be robbing me of thousands of dollars, Glory. And you know I don’t like to lose money.”
Glory was frozen, stumped by the money issue. She had hoped Natalie would see the savings in letting them go. “But I’m trying to save you from further grief. She’s moving toward adolescence. Problems ahead. And then there’s school. She needs to go to school before you can put her to work.”
“She’s gotten excellent homeschooling. She was reading Harry Potter when she was nine.”
“But she needs to get out for social development. She’s entitled to that, isn’t she?”
“What school is going to enroll a kid who has no documentation, no record of immunizations?” Natalie asked quietly.
“But . . . but she was born in the house. I’m sure that’s happened before. There must be a way she can get a birth certificate.”
“That’s the least of your worries. You see, she has a birth certificate.” Natalie rolled her chair over to a dark wood file cabinet, pulled out a drawer, and extracted a folder. “Soon after she was born, I went through a midwife to let them know there was a home birth. She was kind enough to help us get a birth certificate for Luna. I knew I would need one to add her as a dependent on our taxes, not to mention increasing our food stamps.”
The crisp piece of paper was embossed in the corner with a seal. Across the top was the banner: CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH. “She has a birth certificate!” Glory was tickled by the discovery as she read over the document. Name: Luna Petrov. So Leo had given his daughter his name. Leo was listed as the father, and as the mother . . .
Annabelle Clayton.
“Wait. There’s a mistake here. It lists Annabelle as the mother instead of me.”
“That’s no mistake.” Natalie’s slash of a mouth curved in a smile. “I figured if I was going to invest in this child, Leo and I had to have ownership of her.”
“Ownership? You can’t own a child. And I’m her mother. You can’t take that away from me.”
Natalie shrugged. “What’s done is done.” She plucked the birth certificate from Glory’s hand and dropped it back into the file.
“You need to change it. Put me down as her mother.”
“Can’t be changed. And we’re not doing anything that will bring attention to our house. We can’t have social workers and cops knocking on our door. You know what happens when you bring in outsiders.”
Annabelle had contacted the police . . . she had paid the ultimate price.
Natalie waved Glory off. “Now go. Back to work or wait in the van. Out of here before you ruin my afternoon, which you’ve already done.”
Glory walked stiffly down the hallway, nearly numbed by the prospect of servitude for the rest of her life. Slavery. And her daughter was being dragged into the mire behind her. She’d been a fool to think they could make a smooth exit. Now, even if she managed to sneak Luna out, Natalie could come after her with a kidnapping charge. A genetic test would prove that Luna was her daughter, but that didn’t guarantee that she would get to keep her once Natalie got involved.
This was going to be difficult, but Glory and Luna had to do it. Glory was going to find a way, a man, an opportunity to get away . . . far, far away.
She had been sure Tyler Engle was going to be the answer to all her problems. But now the patina of pleasure was wearing off the bar scene as the server announced that it was last call, and Tyler declined.
“I’m going to miss you, Glory,” he said. “Can I give you a ride home?”
“To your home?” she said sweetly, knowing he would take her there and hoping, hoping that she could persuade him bit by bit.
“Fine with me. As long as we stay in the moment.”
She slid off the barstool and linked her arm through his, knowing she had nowhere else to go. The past and future were closed off to her. T
he moment was her only choice.
* * *
It was after 4:00 A.M. when he dropped her off a block away from the house. Climbing back up was always more challenging than sliding out, especially after a few drinks, but she had figured out a way to climb the woodpile, using the stacked layers as a ladder. Her bad knee ached as she climbed, and she looked forward to falling onto her bed and sleeping for a bit. Standing on top of the wood stack, she was high enough to reach the edge of the shed roof to pull herself up. The storage building was tiny, a six-by-four-foot rubber-coated shed that Leo used to store the lawn mower and garden tools. The fake-shingled roof was a bit slick with early-morning dew, but she managed to get some traction under her boots as she hobbled over to the side of the house and pushed up the unlatched window. After that, it was easy to hoist herself up a few feet, slip inside, and land on her bed. She had to wiggle on her back with her feet in the air to keep her boots off the comforter.
“Good morning, Mama.” Luna’s head popped out of the covers from the bed across the room like a sprite prairie dog peeking out of its hole. “Is it morning?”
“Not just yet. Go back to sleep, love bug.”
“Did you have a good time with your friend?”
“Yes, I did.” But not good enough. Tyler was not a hero. No one wanted to be a hero.
But maybe that was her mistake, looking for a savior when she should possess the courage to save herself. She removed the cell phone from her jacket pocket and stared at its shiny surface in her palm. What if she called the police right now? If the dispatcher believed her emergency and the police came to the house, would she be able to get herself and Luna to the door and talk to a cop? Would they believe that she was being held against her will? Would they believe that Luna was her daughter? And if they did, would they let her have custody of her own daughter once they had escaped?
She couldn’t chance it, at least not right now. Too many times she had seen Leo smooth over things with the police. A few friendly anecdotes, a pitch about how he and his sister helped lost souls get back on their feet. Enter Natalie in a wheelchair, so respectful with her story of how their father had been a police sergeant in Idaho or Arizona or Oklahoma. A lie, but Glory had seen them use the story to woo everyone from the security guard at the mall to the cops who’d appeared at the door with lights spinning over the yard behind them.
The cops couldn’t save her and Luna now.
There had to be another way.
CHAPTER 24
“She’s waking up. Tamarind? Hey. Can you hear me? I love you. You’re done with surgery, and you did great. The best patient in the history of medicine. Hey, dilnashi. Are you coming out of it? Maybe not. Take your time. We got time. Thank God, we got time.”
Pete’s voice came to her through cottony veils of anesthetics draped through her mind. Then the rhythmic beeping and whispering of the machinery, the monitors. She was in the hospital. Surgery. So afraid of dying, of leaving too soon on a cold metal table while the objects of her heart, her husband and daughters, her parents, were cut adrift in the void of her former life. So nervous, until she was not. Some drug mixed into the anesthesia to relax the patient, sending her off to the best sleep of her life.
Now the pain was raw and ever present, weighing on her chest, though it seemed separated from her—barely a problem—as her husband’s voice flooded in through the symphony of hospital sounds.
“I’m okay?” The words came out like rusty barks from her burning throat. Damn, she needed water. She opened her eyes to see Pete leaning over her. Ruby was beside him, and Rima stood at the foot of the bed, crochet work in her hands as she observed, ever the mother hen.
“You are awake,” Pete said, squeezing her hand. “How you feeling?”
“So thirsty.”
“There’s water here.” Ruby produced a plastic white cup with a straw from the bedside table.
Tamarind’s floppy hands were taped up and attached to lines, but she was able to hold the cup. She sipped cool, liquid heaven. The parched sensation eased, but her throat still felt pinched.
“I’ll get the nurse,” Rima said. “She wanted to know when you woke up.”
“The surgery went well,” Pete said, adding an explanation of the good things Dr. Hernandez had told him. As he spoke Tamarind’s fog cleared enough for her to see their faces, her handsome husband and her thoughtful daughter, both of them at her bedside trying not to stare at her but unable to look away. Beyond the globes of their heads was a plant on the windowsill—a practical gift, no doubt from her mother—and a cluster of balloons anchored to some medical hookup on the far wall.
“Does it hurt?” Ruby asked.
“It’s a good pain. It tells me I’m done with the bad part.”
Ruby sniffed and gave a little laugh. “That’s good.”
“What time is it? Did you get something to eat?”
“We’re going to get something in the cafeteria. We were waiting for you to wake up.”
“That’s sweet, but honey, you don’t have to stay all day.”
“I want to,” Ruby said. “That was the deal.”
Both girls had wanted to take the day off from school to be at the hospital for the surgery, which was fine for Ruby. When they learned that Aurora would not be able to play in that night’s soccer game with a school absence, they had decided to send her to school and bring her to the hospital in the afternoon.
“Look what we brought you”—Ruby gestured behind her—“a bunch of balloons. You should have seen Dad trying to get them into the elevator. Some doctors got bonked.”
Pete rubbed his forehead. “It would have been easier to corral a bag of marbles at Pioneer Square. You should have seen me trying to drive.”
“I love them. They’ll buoy my spirits,” Tamarind said.
“Bah-dah-boom! Fresh out of surgery and she’s making bad puns.”
“I’m here every night. They’ve got me in stitches,” Tamarind said, and Pete chuckled as he squeezed her hand.
Rima returned with the nurse, Hannah, who wanted to check Tamarind’s vitals and the surgical dressing.
“This would be a good time for you all to take a walk, go grab some coffee or something to eat,” Hannah said. “I’m going to give Tamarind some more pain meds, and she’ll probably be sleeping for a while.”
Tamarind just had time to finish her drink before she slipped down again into the bland world of hospital sleep. When she came up to the surface again, the buzz of voices was growing in her room.
The family was here. Pete’s parents, her dad. Aurora in her soccer uniform. Ruby with her friend Maxi. Half the roster of Pete’s very loud siblings, including Kaysandra, the sister who had seemed so argumentative at first, so strongheaded, until she had been unleashed as Pete and Tamarind’s champion.
“I’m not supposed to be doing this, but I’ve been snooping around for you two, trying to get things going.” Kaysandra’s voice had boomed from the speakerphone when she called just a few weeks after they had completed the application to become foster parents. They had been asked to reveal financial information, their savings and debts, as well as personal information about how often they made love and whether they practiced a religion. A full shakedown, as Pete said. When was that? Twelve years ago? It seemed like yesterday.
“I can’t be your caseworker, Pete. That wouldn’t be right, with me being your sister and all, but I can push a few buttons if you know what I mean. And I saw those two little girls on the intake list, waiting for a foster family, and I thought, What the hell? Why not put them in a foster family that’s interested in adopting? Foster parents like you two. An infant and her older sister who seems to be four, maybe five. We’re not sure about her age, but we want to keep the sisters together, of course.”
“Of course.” Tamarind’s heart was dancing in her chest at the prospect of an instant family. Two little girls. Daughters!
“Two children.” Pete was hesitant. “We were kind of hoping for just one
baby. One at a time, you know. Until we figure out what end is up.” Tamarind smacked his shoulder and gave him a menacing look. “But two would work, I guess. You don’t want to break up siblings.”
“It’s a dream come true,” Tamarind said. “We are on board. Definitely.”
“These little girls are mixed race, with dark hair and big ol’ eyes. And Tamarind, I swear, the older one resembles you. Funny how that works out sometimes.”
Tamarind pressed a hand to her heart and leaned into her husband’s arms. Blessings were falling like rain from the sky.
“I’m going to have to call to find out more about their background. Not sure how these two landed in the system. And I’m going to connect with your caseworker, Lana, right? . . . Okay. Let me make some calls and I’ll update you. . . . Okay, bye.”
When Tamarind learned that the two girls had been placed in foster care after their mother abandoned them at a firehouse, the desire to pull them into her arms was irresistible. “The older girl, Ruby? I can’t imagine what she’s gone through. Abandoned by her mom, Pete. Her heart must be broken. My heart is breaking for her. And we can help her heal.”
“How do we do that?”
“Love, you fool. We give her love and security, a forever home, a forever family.”
He had kissed her, told her she was brilliant, and then they had driven to the other side of Portland to pick up the girls. At first sight Pete had been mesmerized by the demanding Aurora, a baby with smooth mocha-colored skin who wanted to be carried around when she wasn’t trying to insert her fist in her mouth. The baby alone had been a handful, and Tamarind had been grateful that her mother had been willing to drop everything in Seattle and move into their guest room to care for the infant while Tamarind wooed Ruby. She had been determined to adopt a baby, but Ruby was the one who captured her heart immediately. The serious and methodical Ruby transitioned smoothly into the Montessori school but kept to herself most days, making up little games and role-playing with objects such as DUPLO blocks, Matchbox cars, crackers, and tub toys. That little girl could spend an hour just organizing rubber ducks in line to “visit” the closet. Most of the time Ruby was remarkably self-contained for a child that age, perhaps too self-disciplined. She seemed content when someone was reading to her, and she knew some children’s books and poems by heart, which delighted Rima. But the little girl’s resolve began to crack after a week or so, when she began to resist bedtime and positioned herself at the window each night after dark. Each night Tamarind asked her what she was looking for, but Ruby had no answer.
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